


As Sweet as Blood Red Jam

by objectlesson



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Casual Sex, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Exhibitionism, Internalized Homophobia, Loneliness, M/M, Mentions of AIDS/HIV, Mentions of Casual Hard Drug Use, Oral Sex, Porn Filming, Porn Industry AU, Porn Watching, Rimming, Self destruction, Sex for Money, Slow Burn, Straight Boy Fetish, Voyeurism, gay for pay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:30:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21691459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Doc should ask him to leave. Kick him out, slide a wadded handful of cash into that deceitfully big, capable-looking hand (or maybe the pocket of his Levis, close to his scrubbed-clean skin), but instead he asks, “Want a beer? Bet I could find some F1 to watch,” because hewantsto get hurt, maybe. Because he’s never gotten good at sayingnobefore.Or, Doc's an ex porn star making amateur gay4pay videos out of his home studio in the valley and drinking too much. He picks Lightning up thinking it's a one-off thing, but then he comes back. And then he comes back again.
Relationships: Doc Hudson/Lightning McQueen
Comments: 37
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god, so many notes on this story. It's my first AU in this fandom and it's a lot more sordid and filthy than my canon fics because Doc, in particular, is a lot less in control of his life. Ive wanted to write a messier, un-put together version of his character for awhile, and then I stumbled across a particular porn site with an older guy shooting self insert type gay4pay scenes, and this just came together. It's fucked up and there are weird power dynamics and the whole thing is just!!! problematic sorry folks. I'm gonna be posting it in installations because its long!!! Don't read it if you're uncomfortable with porn industry talk and seediness. That being said it's gonna have a really sweet ending you just gotta trudge through some dirt first.

Doc notices him right away. 

This pretty, young, wind-swept thing, with his hair bleached cornsilk-blond and his skin bronzed, likely from hours spent glittering in the sun like a new penny half-buried in the sand. A surfer or a skater, maybe, given his lithe build and the natural tone to his arms, enough he does _something_ but probably isn’t a serious athlete. He’s drunk, but Doc suspects even sober his smile would be this wild and lazy, rare enough a sight at a dive like Foxfire that it burns his eyes to look at it, the white of his teeth searing and impossible through the haze of smoke filtered in low-red light. 

Foxfire is a drunk’s bar, especially on a Wednesday afternoon. The only folks in here are locals and regulars, sad men like Doc looking in the bottom of a bottle to sate the shameful longing for company after having driven everyone who counts away. It isn’t the sort of place Doc’s ever _seen_ a boy like this, some late-twenties speck of fool’s gold caught drifting down the delta of a polluted river. It doesn’t make sense, so he stares. 

Doc doesn’t usually pick up boys at Foxfire. It’s walking distance from his house, so he’s there at least twice a week, plus he’s learned it’s best not to mix business with pleasure. Even if, in some ways, his business _is_ pleasure. 

But this is the sort of opportunity that opportunists don’t pass up, and Doc is nothing if not an opportunist. So he forgoes his usual pock-marked round table tucked in the back corner between electronic jukeboxes in favor of one of the stools up against the bar, close enough to watch this boy. 

He’s _perfect_ in so many ways. Not just the type who gets a lot of views on the site but also Doc’s _personal_ favorite type. The sort he gets off to alone when he’s looking for videos he _didn’t_ film, the careless golden jocks he was obsessed with in high school, back when he could convince himself that obsession was solely born from envy and not desire. 

“Oh, what grand occasion is it, that we are _blessed_ with your company here at the bar?” Luigi jokes as he approaches Doc, head cocked. Everything Luigi does is excessive with flourish, and Doc can never tell if he’s gay, mocking gay men, or just Italian. 

“No grand occasion. Just looking, for a change,” Doc offers, glance shifting to his left, blond hair a creamsicle streak in his peripheral vision. 

“Oh? Should I not make your usual, then?” Luigi asks, wrist arresting in a half-pour of well whiskey. 

“No, usual’s fine. Get this kid a beer, too, his is empty,” Doc decides. It takes the boy a moment to realize that he’s been bought a drink, staring at the bottle and the sluice of foam flowing over the lip with open confusion as Luigi slides it down to him. Doc grins into his fist. “That’s from me,” he says, taking his drink and shifting two seats down, close enough he doesn’t have to work to be heard. 

“Shit,” the kid says, taking an easy swig. “Thanks, old man. I’ll get your next one.” 

“You’re too young to be drinking this hard on a Wednesday,” Doc tells him, ignoring the offer. “But m’a bad influence, so I’ll help you out.” 

“I just got broken up with,” he admits with a self-deprecating smirk, twisting the bottle around in its own ring of condensation. Doc watches the back of his hand, how the tendons flex, the shift of skin over knuckles. He’s got delicate hands, but they _work,_ he’s probably in manual labor, a packing plant or some other place hauling equipment, judging from the callouses and the short, dirty, bitten nails. “I think m’allowed to get as drunk on a Wednesday as I want, right?” 

“I suppose you’ve got a point,” Doc mumbles, taking the first measured, burning sip of his neat whiskey. “Heartbroken, huh?” 

“I didn’t say my _heart_ was broken,” the kid counters, frowning. No, _pouting._ He sticks his pink, bitten lower lip out, and Doc’s gut clenches up with that familiar feeling, the unnamed, frantic hunger for something just out of reach, slipping away like sand through slotted fingers. It’s how he’s felt his whole life, even when he was neck-deep in the best Columbian cocaine and the industry’s most beautiful boys. It’s how he knew he’d be like this forever. When he was still sick with longing, even in 1976 before the world fell to shit and everyone started dying. “I said _I got broken up with._ S’different. Two different sorts of broken,” the boy explains with effortless confidence, knocking Doc from his reverie. He throws back half the bottle of beer, the lines of his throat rippling like sails along a horizon. 

“Well, did you love her?” Doc asks, staring at his own reflection, distorted in the Christmas-light-lined mirrors behind the bar. He looks old and tired, like he always does. The sort of man who drinks on a Wednesday afternoon in the dirtiest dive, even if he’s wearing a blazer over a nice dress shirt. 

“Of course I did! But, like, was I _in_ love with her? Who knows. She was waaaaay out of my league, and I knew that, I _liked_ it, even. Made me feel good about myself, like, damn, if I can get a girl like her, then maybe m’not a total fuck up, ya’know?” he explains, grinning in that reckless, painful way Doc noticed as soon as he walked in and his eyes adjusted. He finishes off the beer, and Doc immediately gestures to Luigi for another one, needing to see the sloppy pink O of his lips stretched tight around the neck again. _God_ , this boy, he’d rack up so many fucking hits, so many comments. Doc can imagine them now, the usual fare when his viewers get hooked on a particular guy he pulls. _Want more of this boy, would suck that cock so hard, next time get him on with another twink, sick of this old ass fag in all his own videos._ He cards a hand through his hair, wets his lips with his tongue, and wonders how in the hell he’s gonna launch into his usual spiel when he’s at Foxfire. 

“M’sure you’re not a total fuck up, kid,” he says eventually, watching those narrow fingers curl around another bottle. 

“Shit, compared to her I was. She was a _fancy corporate lawyer_ in LA with her own big, high-rise apartment downtown. Rooftop jacuzzi, the works. I’m a _mechanic_ from _Missouri,”_ he slurs, slouching on the stool with his arms draped across the bar. He has freckles beneath the blond dusting of hair there, and Doc is already wondering what he looks like under his tight blue jeans, his white tee-shirt tucked in and stained at the underarms. Perfect, pretty, straight boy, insecure and sad and alone, looking for one bad decision to make after another. He’s almost _too_ perfect, Doc worries he might leave fingerprints if he were to touch him. “Like, I knew it wasn’t gonna last. I fucking knew it was a matter of time.” 

“Hey,” Doc murmurs, refraining from reaching out and gently, reassuringly slapping this boy’s thigh, which he might do in a different bar, or if he were a mark half as handsome. Instead, he clutches his glass tight enough that his knuckles white out. “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.” 

“Nope,” the boy agrees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, slamming the bottle down to the bar clumsily. “It doesn’t.” 

—-

It’s a common misconception that straight guys will only suck a dick if they’re broke and desperate, but Doc knows better from years of experience. He’s picked up and made videos with CEOs, dentists, real estate agents, surgeons. So many cocky exhibitionists drunk on the taboo, horny from the mere idea of being watched, wanted, desired. Of being told their cock is big, that Doc would like to touch it. All it takes is the proper amount of curiosity coupled with arousal to get a man to take it out, to try it once. Doc has the process down to a science: how to compliment them, feed their arrogance, get them comfortable enough to get hard watching straight porn on camera. From there, it’s easy. 

Men think with their balls. If they can get hard on camera, all the blood rushes south and their inhibitions evaporate and Doc _knows,_ he knows what to say to get the momentum going, how to convince them it’s not gay if they let him touch it. Suck it. 

He doesn’t trick them into it. He just gives them the tools to trick themselves. 

—-

“So what’s your name, kid?” Doc asks, cheeks hot with his second drink. 

“Monty, but no one calls me that. You can call me McQueen,” he says, grimacing. He’s switched from beer to something tropical, a mai tai or a mojito or a margarita. Doc doesn’t know, he didn’t order it; he only paid for it. 

“McQueen? Like the King of Cool?” he snorts, shaking his head. “You come up with that?” 

“Nah, it’s my honest-to-god last name,” McQueen forces out through a grin, shaking his head. The more he drinks, the sweatier his hair gets, and it’s darkened to something almost red at this point, rose-gold, strawberry-blond, sticking to his forehead. Doc want to push it back with his thumb, but there are certain ways he hasn’t touched a man in a long time. He gets to jack them off, suck them off. Sometimes they’ll even let him finger them open, if they’re curious enough, dirty enough. But he hasn’t been kissed in years. Hasn’t carded gentle fingers through soft hair. He doesn’t even think about it most of the time, but there’s something about Monty McQueen. 

“I’m Doc,” he says, offering a hand across the bar. McQueen takes it, squeezing it for a moment before bouncing it clumsily, grinning sharp with narrowed eyes. 

“Well, good to meet you, Doc. Sure nice of you to buy a sad guy some drinks this fine Wednesday afternoon.’ 

“My pleasure. Can tell when someone needs to drink extra hard.” 

“So what’s your story?” he asks then, cocking his head, looking genuinely conversational, like he wants to _know_ where the money paying for his liquor came from. “Are you a real doctor, or is that jut a nickname?” 

Doc thinks of his story, how it’s the sort of thing no one tells another person, too sad and empty but without any genuine tragedy to spice it up, give it cinematic sympathy. He’s just a lonely queer from the middle of nowhere with a long-cultivated taste for old movie stars, boxers, racecar drivers, football players. The type of effortless athleticism he’d always been too slight for. He used to mistake hunger for jealousy until he learned how most things in the world were born from hunger, for one thing or another. He got into porn after he moved west because it was the only place where being a pretty boy paid up. He lived rich and sleazy for a few years before folks like him started dying and everyone got scared. Then he was left alone in the world, drowning his survivor’s guilt with drugs and booze until he wasn’t even pretty anymore, didn’t even have that crutch to fall back upon. 

Now he gets his kicks cruising for straight men to shoot in his private garage studio. It makes enough to pay for his house and his drinking problem, feels good enough to feed the hunger he’s never quite figured out how to outrun. And that, _that’s_ his story. From beginning to end. It’s not a story a thirty-something golden boy with a movie-star name wants to hear. 

“Well,” Doc says, shaking his head. “Born in North Carolina, moved out here when I was younger than you. Did a lot of things, lived a lot of lives, met a lot of people. Now I drink on a Wednesday even though no rich lawyer girl’s ever broken up with me. I’m not a doctor.” 

“I’m not either,” McQueen laughs self-deprecatingly. “Hey, we all got our reasons for drinking.” 

Doc thinks of an unquenchable ache in his gut, the way his list of dead friends kept growing until he stopped counting in ’87. “Guess we do.” 

“What do you do now? Gotta job? I feel like everyone has jobs out here, no one retires in Southern California.” 

“Ain’t that the truth.” 

“So whaddya do?” he asks, leaning over and nudging Doc with his elbow, sloppy and graceless now that he’s properly drunk. 

“You really wanna know, kid?” Doc asks, swirling the remaining golden sheen of whiskey in the pit of his glass. This is always a moment, a gambit.

“Well, yeah,” McQueen answers, cocking his head like he cannot imagine a single thing someone would do for money that might warrant shame. There’s an innocence about him, or perhaps a naïveté. It’s something that turns Doc on about straight men—the way they’re not mired in shame, the way they just exist unabashedly, violently, unapologetically. 

“I make porn,” he admits. 

McQueen’s eyes don’t widen in shock or darken in disgust or change in _any_ measurable way. All they do is narrow a bit as he looks down, grins at his drink. “Huh. What sort of stuff? 

“All sorts,” Dod half-lies, even though he _has_ probably filmed nearly every sort of video at some point in his long, messy career. “Mostly solo, audition-tape type of stuff. Scouting for young talent, that sort of thing,” 

“Damn,” Mcqueen says, throwing back the rest of his drink, sucking right from the ice noisily with his head tilted back. “Well.” 

Doc watches the ripple of his throat and decides to break his Foxfire rule as he reaches for his pocket to fish out a card. It’s just that this kid, Monty McQueen, is one in a million, _special,_ a diamond in the rough. Statistically speaking, if Doc mentions that he produces porn, and guys _don’t_ go running for the hills, he’s half-way to getting them into the studio. And he can’t pass up a 50% sure shot with a guy like this just because he’s at his local bar. “Here’s my card,” he says, pushing it across the bar to McQueen. 

He takes it easily, peers at the print before pocketing it. “What, in case I know any girls?” 

Doc stares at his empty glass, thumbing at the reflection of the Christmas lights in it, like he’s trying to rub out the glimmer of something brighter. “No, I don’t shoot girls,” he admits, calling Luigi over. “In case _you_ were interested.” 

“Ohhh,” McQueen says, sitting back, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Still conversational, still _there._ He hasn’t frantically backed his way out of this yet, the way they sometimes do. He’s still taking Doc up on free drinks, pushing out his glass, gesturing for another. “So this is, like, a gay-for-pay situation.” 

Doc coughs, surprised. Guys don’t usually pick up on it at this point, not unless they’re paranoid and ready to run. Hell, some don’t even pick up on it until they’re _there,_ dick out and hard and Doc down on his knees next to the set up, holding a bottle of lube, asking questions. He balks, but he recovers; he’s old and jaded, he’s seen every type. 

“Nah, not necessarily...it’s whatever you’re comfortable with. Sometimes, it’s just some photos...other times, it’s more. Usually, I get the camera rolling, throw on some straight porn, and see what the talent is comfortable with. Maybe it’s just busting a nut on film. There are worse things in the world than getting paid eighty bucks to drop a load for your favorite girl,” Doc explains, using the language he’s picked up from years of observing what makes straight men run, what makes them dig themselves a deeper grave of denial. 

McQueen raises his eyebrows. “Eighty bucks for just that?” 

“Yeah, at least. More for more, obviously. But I pay my boys.” 

“Shit,” he murmurs, impressed. He nods thoughtfully for a moment before knocking back more of his mai tai and fishing Doc’s card out from his pocket again, peering at it with hazy eyes in the low bar light. “Your name is Doc _Hornet?_ That’s weirder than Monty McQueen.” 

“It was my name when I did porn, so it stuck. Speaking of which, you don’t need to ever use your real name in my videos, you can give a pseudonym. I don’t even have to put anything up on my site, whatever you do could be for a private collection if you’re worried about someone seeing. No pressure or anything. I just know you’re hard up on luck, and well...just want you to know. That there are a lot of options, I mean.” 

McQueen is very quiet for a moment, and Doc’s sure that he pushed it too far, ruined his chances by being too forward, breaking his Foxfire rule, getting too drunk. But then McQueen studies his face carefully with a warm sweeping gaze and says, “So you did porn. I can see it, actually...you got those pretty blue eyes.” 

Doc blinks at him, startled, heart clenching and flipping over. This fleeting moment cast in sticky red bar light is what he’ll think about later, when he’s alone and wondering how this happened, _if_ it happened. The moment he should have fucking _known_ he was gonna fall for Monty fucking McQueen and his dirty nails. 

He doesn’t know now, though. He just tears his eyes away, swallows a mouthful of nervous spit, prepares to deflect. “So your ex-girlfriend. Were you living with her? Bet she had a _real_ fancy place if she was a lawyer.” 

“Yeah,” McQueen says after another loaded moment of scrutiny. “I’m renting in the Valley now, by the shop I work at. It sucks, I have the worst roommates, but it’s cheap...you know the apartment complex down Laurel Canyon and Riverside, near the market?” 

“Aw, shit, m’not too far from you, just on the other side of Magnolia, past Burbank Boulevard.” 

“Hell! No wonder we both ended up here, the only walking-distance bar with cheap-ass well drinks,” he grins, holding up his mai tai to toast. Their glasses clink together, and Doc’s fingers come back tacky, wet. 

“Well, you got my number, give me a ring if you’re curious about what it’s like. No commitment, no contract, just come check the studio out. I’ll even show you some videos,” Doc throws out as a final offer, sensing that McQueen is about to get up and leave, stumble out onto the street, and walk home past all the pizza places, past the high school. 

“You’re a sly old man, you know that?” McQueen says with a grin. Then he gets up and leaves.

Doc’s certain that he’s blown it, but then McQueen comes back with some napkins and cash from the ATM, which he forks over. “Here, this pays for at least a few drinks. You’ve been so generous.” 

Doc takes it, head spinning. “Thanks, I guess.” 

“You know,” McQueen says, shaking his head before tilting it back, eyes closed and pointed toward the ceiling, his hands behind his neck, face bathed in bar light. “LA…and the Valley especially? Fucking weird. One day, you get broken up with, you stumble to the nearest dive imagining how you’re gonna get shit-faced alone, and instead you end up hanging out with some ’70s porn star. Wild,” he says, eyes flashing open, smile achingly wide. “Cheers!” 

“Cheers,” Doc echoes, baffled. “Are we getting another round?” 

“Yeah,” McQueen announces, gesturing for Luigi, spots of color on his cheeks. “We are.” 

—-

In some ways, Doc is shattering the exact thing that draws him in about straight men: he’s bringing them shame. 

Once it’s over and they’ve come, reality filters in, dawns upon them. Doc watches the horror creep into their eyes, the embarrassment darkening their cheeks as they scramble to cover themselves, insisting they didn’t like it or muttering excuses for why they did, refusing to meet his eyes. 

Only the younger, highly confident ones ever linger. The ones who have girlfriends, who view this as simply an experience, a sensation to collect, not something that says anything about their interior or selfhood. Doc has time to actually look at those sorts of boys as they come down from their orgasms, at the looseness of their limbs, their labored breath, the faraway haze in their eyes like the marine layer before it’s burnt away by the sun. 

He knows other men like him in the industry get off on the shame. But it’s these moments that Doc holds onto: imagining a boy who might stay, who might change his mind, who might leave the velvet-draped walls and the heat of an old man’s mouth _changed._

_—-_

They move to his usual table tucked back in between the electronic jukeboxes, and Doc learns more than he bargained for about Monty McQueen. 

He learns that despite the scrubbed, boyish softness of his face, he just turned thirty-two. That he got a job fixing cars only because he used to hotwire them as a teenager ( _one of my few talents_ , he’d joked). He never knew his dad, sends checks back to his mom, and didn’t have any friends worth keeping up with back in the trailer park where he traded painkillers for car parts. Doc learns he believes whole-heartedly that he used to be an arrogant prick before he met his ex-girlfriend, the woman who whipped him into shape until she got tired of him. He learns that her name was Sally, that she had shiny dark hair and blue eyes, and that’s all McQueen seems to remember clearly enough to describe her with. He learns that McQueen is self-deprecating, sweet, and funny, that his smile is a fierce, biteable thing, looser and wider the more he drinks, the more he spills. 

Just when Doc starts to feel like he’s creeping dangerously close to being too drunk to safely take McQueen back to the studio if he decides he actually wants that, McQueen shakes his head, grins at the ceiling, and says, “Dunno about you, but it’s late and m’feeling crazy and all that talk about Sally and money makes me think about how much I’m just…not in a position to be turning down eighty bucks.” 

The implication alone sobers Doc up a bit. “Well,” he says, clearing his throat. “If you wanna walk down the street and check out my studio, I’ll close out our tabs. The night’s young. We can still make some magic.” 

There’s a moment that seems to stretch on for too long, the red light, the smell of spilled bitters, the music low and grainy and indistinguishable from a broken speaker. Gold hair, gold skin, blue eyes, and Doc feeling impossibly withered and gray beside it. 

“Alright,” McQueen says, smile widening, eyes flashing. “What the hell.” 

Doc stares at the shape of his back as he stumbles out of Firefox, the narrow red walls closing in on him, a cloudy funhouse mirror. McQueen’s shorter than Doc realized now that he’s standing beside him, now that they’re shouldering the heavy door open and tripping out into the still-warm dusk together. The Valley smells like exhaust and fried food and loneliness, and the stark familiarity of it hits Doc hard, sobers him up another notch. He swallows, thinking, _I can do this. I can pull it together. Done this a hundred times before._

He’s not even sure why it feels so strange, walking with this boy who won’t even let him call him by his first name, who’s acting like this is easy, simple, the sort of thing men just _do_ together when they’ve had one drink too many and their hearts hurt from being broken up with. He seems, somehow, like he’s completely onto Doc and just going through the motions, like he has _no_ idea what sort of hornet’s nest he’s stumbling into. 

Doc wants to kiss him, wants to sting him, and he’s not used to feeling any of those things. He’s used to thinking, _I bet I could trick your sorry ass into letting me blow you. Just watch, you’ll see._ He can’t put his finger on McQueen, he’s _compromised_ somehow, vision too blurred to neatly categorize him. Right now, he exists in liminal space, this strange magic thing outside the realm that Doc rules within. 

They don’t talk much on the walk over, and Doc keeps expecting him to rethink his decision out here in the harsh, ugly streetlight of the real world. He doesn’t, though. Or if he’s thinking about backing out, he’s at least curious enough to see this mess through to some natural breaking point. “This is it,” Doc announces, unlatching the gate and letting them both into the dried-out, mostly-dirt-and-concrete dog run between his fence and garage. “Not much to look at on the outside, but it’s fixed up nice inside.” 

“You live here, too?” McQueen asks, following Doc inside. 

“Yeah, this is a converted garage,” Doc explains, flicking on the lights. They hum, illuminating the fabric-festooned wall with framed ‘70s porn posters, the flat-screen TV monitors, the bookcases stocked with DVDs and vintage _Playboys_ and _Hustlers_. There’s a glass coffee table, a K-cup machine, a refrigerator with beer and bottle shots in case he finds himself or one of his boys in need of some liquid courage. Then, of course, the plastic-coated couch and lounger, where all the excitement happens. 

“Damn,” McQueen whistles, thumbs hooked into his belt loops. “This is weirdly swanky. Sort of a retro feel.” 

Doc shrugs. “I’m old. This is how it all used to be. Everything’s streamlined, too clean these days…I dunno, I guess I just appreciate a little grit to it still.” 

“Red Light District feel, I like it,” McQueen says, sitting on the couch. “Plastic, how…sanitary.” 

“If we shoot, I’ll drape some nice blankets over that, the plastic’s just to protect the upholstery. Can’t imagine it would feel too nice sticking to something like that when you’re trying to jack off. You want some water? Some coffee?” 

“No booze?” McQueen asks, cocking his head, gaze still sweeping over the studio, taking it all in. “Damn, did you produce all those? Or are you in ‘em?” 

Doc snorts, gets a beer and a bottle of water out of the fridge with oddly tremulous hands. “Hell, no, not all of them. A few, maybe. Most are just my collection, shit I’ve picked up over the years so that there’s a whole library for guys like you to choose from when you get here. There’s always the Internet, too. That’s where I make my money, anyway. No business for DVDs anymore, really.” 

“I gotta tell you, this is a whole world I’ve never really thought too much about,” McQueen says, grabbing a _Playboy_ off the coffee table and casually flipping through it. 

Doc uncaps the beer and hands it to him. “So,” he says, sitting down on a chair that squeaks under his shifting weight. “You serious about this whole thing?” 

“M’serious, sure, why not? I mean, I jack off to porn at home for free, what’s different about doing it here for some cash?” 

Doc purses his lips, gesturing to the tripods stacked up against the wall. “Well, the cameras, for one thing. It can be a lot of pressure.” He doesn’t mention the other things that will be different. That he’ll be there, watching, hungry. That he’s an opportunist, that he’ll offer more money for content once this boy is hard, if it ends up being that sort of video. That he’s an administrator of shame. 

McQueen shrugs. “Well I guess we’ll see. Do I, like…have to sign anything?” he asks. “Also, m’clean, by the way, I dunno if you need, like…records of that or whatever? But I got tested recently because Sally asked, and, yeah. M’good to go.” 

The corner of Doc’s mouth quirks up into an amused, disbelieving half-smile as he gets a consent form out. He’s not usually this careful, not usually this thorough, not usually this _professional._ He wonders if it’s because, for some reason, he actually _likes_ this boy, _wants_ him, and feels the need to overcompensate for that transgression. “Great, good to know. Just read this through, fill it out. I’ll prep the cameras and the couch...once you finish, go check out the bookcase, see if there’s anything in particular you want me to put on.” 

McQueen flushes, presses the pen into his teeth. “We’ll see.” 

—-

Doc finds straight men so compelling because they’re a fantasy. The bullies, the team captains, the coaches, the athletes, the buddies who didn’t know any better. The doctors, the dads. All of the men Doc watched and longed for from afar while he burnt up in his own dirty, silent shame. The boys who stole his lunch money because he was scrawny and they knew they could get away with it, the track stars who outran him during PE, the pediatricians who pushed a cold stethoscope into his back, reached between his legs, and told him to cough. So much confusion and repression and self-loathing and want, and Doc in the middle of it, knowing there were _other_ men like him out there but not having a single one to look toward as a feasible option. His teenage years were characterized by idle want, fighting as foreplay, the occasional drunk, experimental circle jerk when he _knew_ there was something that set him apart from the rest. 

Later, when he met and fucked other gay men, he’d still harbor that fantasy, even neck-deep and drowning in all the sin he’d ever craved. It was something—something about the unattainability. The invisibility. The risk. 

Knowing that when he has a straight man on his plastic couch, dick out, shining with spit, the stunned look in his eyes is his and his alone. He is something they’ll only do once but think about for the rest of their lives, perhaps with something cold against their back, a hand between their legs, a cough in their throat. Perhaps when they’re drunk and playing Russian roulette. Or perhaps late at night in the shower, just as they capsize over an edge. 

—-

As soon as McQueen’s naked, Doc realizes that his usual tried-and-true schtick isn’t gonna work on him. 

For years, his most fool-proof seduction tactic has been to compliment his mark’s dick size. Men are vain, every one of them, and they get hard from the praise, the validation. It’s just an elaborate form of masturbation, turning them on with their own desirability. Men with actually-big dicks get smug, and ones with average-sized dicks eat it up, dig for more, like kids at the beach looking for sand crabs. Straight men are arrogant, delusional, hungry. Doc knows how to feed them. 

He’s not sure how to feed McQueen, though, because he’s _not_ average, he’s significantly _less_ than average. He rolls his clingy red boxer-briefs down narrow hips, and there, in a coarse, red-brown thatch of pubic hair, is a small, soft, circumcised cock. There’s no way around it. He’s neither thick nor long, and Doc can tell that, even hard, he’s just not gonna get much bigger, there’s no room to grow. 

But it makes his mouth water, his stomach clench up, because humiliation, whether or not he’s on the receiving end of it, is something that’s been woven inextricably into his sexuality and therefore his desires since he was in grade school. He doesn’t have a particular _thing_ for small cocks, but he _does_ have a thing for force-fed self-awareness, for overcompensation. McQueen is small enough that he _knows_ he’s small. Probably got teased for it in the locker room as a kid, probably was an asshole as a teenager to make up for the insecurity until he learned more constructive ways to impress girls, like going down on them, using his hands. Doc thinks of those narrow rough fingers and bites the inside of his cheek, gaze tracking down McQueen’s legs and their golden sheen. 

McQueen sits down on the couch, which Doc just draped in a simple blanket, the navy blue one that looks good on camera, especially against blond-haired, blue-eyed boys. And there he sits with his thighs apart, palming himself, studying Doc as he fiddles with the camera, using it as an excuse to steal long, lingering looks at him. 

“By the way, m’aware my equipment isn’t all that impressive,” McQueen admits, playing with it. “Is there a market for that?” 

“Kid, there’s a market for everything,” Doc tells him, pulling back from the camera and rubbing his chin. 

_Fuck,_ he could fit the whole thing in his mouth, so goddamned easy to swallow. He could _do_ so much, but he doesn’t know what to _say_. Everything he can think of won’t bolster McQueen’s ego, it’ll just scare him away. It’s too much, too raw, too _famished_ to work in this scenario, where he can’t seem as gay as he is until he’s already hooked his prey and reeled him in. He has to appear professional but vaguely appreciative, even _jealous._ Indifferent to a boy’s body, like a bully, a team captain, a coach, an athlete, a buddy who doesn’t know any better. But all he can think when he looks at McQueen’s cock is, _god, so pretty, so sweet-looking, so pink. Bet I could cover that whole thing with my hand. Bet I could swallow you down without gagging. Bet I could fuck the come right out of that pretty cock._

He tears his gaze away, clears his throat. “What sort of video do you want? See anything you like?” 

“Um,” McQueen says, smiling shyly, adjusting the way he’s sitting. He doesn’t seem particularly self-conscious about being naked in front of Doc, but he’s so _unsettled_ every time porn comes up. Doc wants to push on it, press his fingers into the bruise. “I dunno, I looked at what you have, but it was sort of intimidating. I, like, don’t know any porn stars’ names or anything.” 

“That’s fine” Doc shrugs, rolling on his office chair to the bookcase. “I’ve got it all, gang bang, anal, vanilla shit, lesbian,” he rattles off, eyes scanning the shelf. He can _feel_ McQueen blushing, rustling, and he wants to cup his hands around the pink heat of his cheeks. 

“Well, I know...uh, I know I don’t like that really overproduced, ‘plastic blonde girls with fake tits’ stuff. It reminds me of the _Playboys_ guys passed around in middle school, I never got into that shit.” 

“So, more natural? Milfs maybe? Or, hey, let’s fire up the computer and find some amateur stuff.” 

“Yeah, okay, sure,” McQueen mutters, shaking his head, grinning like he can’t believe any of this. “Not gonna lie, this is...it’s weird.” 

“Yeah, I bet,” Doc offers, keeping his gaze trained on the laptop as he pulls up pornhub and finds an amateur solo video, cam-style, average-to-pretty-looking brunette. “Gonna back out on me? S’okay if you need to.” 

“No, no,” McQueen says, shaking his head, spreading his thighs wider, and fisting his length slow and lazy. He’s still soft but chubbing up minimally, like the mere idea, the _set up_ is exciting in and of itself. It’s a promising reaction, and Doc licks his lips, lets his gaze linger and snag. “I’m fine.” Then he adjusts, looks into the camera with nervous blue eyes, still unfocused and drunk, pupils wide and black and lovely, like water lit only by moonlight. “How do I look?” he asks, posing like he’s watched solo jacking off videos before, like he knows the way boys look in porn. 

Doc’s stomach leaps, tightens like cat gut on a violin. “You look good. You’re not big, but you’re proportionate,” he says, like it’s just an observation. “It’s a nice cock.” 

McQueen laughs. His eyes drop to the easy curl of his hand on himself as he says, “Well, thanks.” 

“Camera’s rolling, m’gonna just adjust the lighting, get you some lotion. You can make yourself comfortable, watch the video. Pretend m’not here,” Doc says, knees popping as he rises unsteadily. It’s lube, not lotion, but he knows from years of experience that language changes things, registers in such a way that straight men spook and run. For some fucked up reason, it’s fine to jack off with lotion but not lube. Doc tapes over the label, uses the opaque brand. He likes it better anyway because it looks like come. “How’s that video?” he asks, shooting a look at McQueen over his shoulder. 

His chest is flushed, his hand working in earnest, his cock half-hard. “Uh,” he shrugs. “It’s fine. M’turned on, so I guess it’s doing the trick.” 

Doc wonders if it’s the video that’s turning him on or something else. Being watched, being on display, being told he has a nice cock. He takes a deep breath, pours a shot, and swigs half before offering the rest. “You want some?” 

“Yeah,” McQueen says, and their fingers brush as he takes the glass, finishes the whiskey off, and coughs, eyes watering.

Feeling dizzy and emboldened by the way that McQueen’s not even watching the laptop, Doc takes a risk. “You’re a really gorgeous boy,” he murmurs, eyes tracking all over his body, drinking him in. “The small cock suits you. If you do...if you decide to give me permission to post this video on my site, I guarantee it’ll get a lot of hits.” 

“Oh, yeah?” McQueen asks, making eye contact, showing off, spreading wider, and palming himself luxuriously. He _definitely_ likes being watched, whether or not he realizes it. “Do you pay me more later if I get a lot of hits?” 

“Sometimes. If I can convince you to come back, make a regular gig out of it, sometimes I do advance payments. I also pay more for more specialized content, if you’re interested,” he ventures, clambering down on his knees beside the couch, under the guise of adjusting the blanket for the camera.

McQueen is breathless, cock fully hard and sweetly pink in his fist. “What sort of content?” 

“Hmmm,” Doc ponders, looking at him right between the thighs, testing if he’ll balk or flinch or cover himself up. This is the point at which men he’ll never touch ask nervously if he’s gonna watch the whole time, and he tells them he’ll leave if they want him to, draw the curtain he has in the middle of the room, and sometimes jack off on the other side. McQueen thumbs over the glistening head of his cock and doesn’t look away. “Damn, you look good,” Doc says. 

That nervous laughter again, that tipsy smile. “Thanks,” McQueen mumbles, the blue of his eyes getting dark and stormy, the color ships get lost in. Doc purses his lips, preparing to launch into a speech about how much each act is worth to sterilize the whole thing, turn it into a transaction instead of sex. But something is stopping him, an unspeakable tension crystalizing in the air, keeping him poised on the edge of a chasm, words locked and dying in his throat. He swallows, dry-mouthed, tastes whiskey on the back of his tongue, and instead of his usual spiel, he murmurs, “How’d you feel about letting me touch it?” 

McQueen exhales another gale of reflexive laughter, fist tightening as his cock flexes. “Is that the other content you mentioned?”

“It’s an option.” 

“Do you really have a website?” McQueen asks then, voice fragile and breathy, eyes narrowed and locked on Doc’s. Usually boys are half-focused on the camera, distracted by it, afraid of it at the same time they’re self-consciously performing for it. Doc keeps feeling like McQueen has forgotten about it all together. “Or were you just trying to pick me up the whole time?” 

It’s Doc’s turn for nervous laughter. He shakes his head, grips the navy-blue blanket on the couch to still the sudden tremor of his hands. “I have a website,” he says, voice sharp even though he’s doing everything he can to stop himself from sounding defensive, exposed _._ “You want me to pull it up?” 

“No,” McQueen sighs, grinning. His hand is still moving, his dick still hard. And as the room spins, Doc wonders if he’s gonna get lucky, or if he’s just trying his luck. It’s hard to know the difference when you’re as old as he is, old and half-starved and hiding behind cameras just to beg for crumbs. “I believe you.” 

There’s a moment of mostly quiet, interrupted only by the fake moans coming from the laptop and the sticky, muted _snick_ of McQueen’s hand moving up and down his shaft. Doc can’t take it. “Here, use some lotion, get it slick,” he grits out, offering the bottle.

McQueen sucks his teeth, cocks his head. Every motion seems coy, or maybe that’s Doc’s imagination, this whole scene distorted through fingers of whiskey, an amber haze. “You can do it,” he says then, shrugging, smiling. “I don’t mind.” 

Doc shakes his head, pumps some lube out into his palm. It glistens, thick like spit, like a fresh load. “You sure?” he asks, which he almost never asks. You have to strike when the jugular’s exposed, kick them when they’re down. 

“Yeah,” McQueen says, letting go of himself, cock thudding against the ladder of his abdominals, flexing, _so_ fucking hard that Doc swallows audibly to keep from gasping. “Yeah, you can touch it.” 

And there it is: the green light, the golden ticket. Those words feel like a needle slipping cold and urgent into a junkie’s vein, the promise of euphoria only seconds away. 

“You tell me to stop if you decide you don’t like it,” Doc says, reaching out and curling his fist around steel-hard heat, making McQueen let out a stunned, awed little yelp. “That alright?” 

“Yeah, s’good,” he slurs, head rolling on the couch. He pumps his hips into the pressure as Doc works him over, just coating his cock and balls in lube, making everything shiny. It looks small and eager in his hand, so he’s gentle, takes his time, _teases._ It’s good to leave straight men wanting more, making them scramble to adjust their rules or boundaries just to chase an orgasm. Doc knows he’s the best hand these men have ever had, the best mouth if they let him get that far. He _has_ to be in order for them to so desperately throw away their dignity, to shed their former selves like snake skin. “Fuck, _really_ good. You know what you’re doing,” McQueen groans. 

“It’s my job,” Doc reminds him. 

McQueen says something else, but it’s broken with laughter, with a reflexive moan, and, _fuck,_ he sounds good gasping, coming apart in fragments. Doc hums in the back of his throat and keeps touching. He’s holding heaven in his palm, a perfect weight, a skidding heartbeat. And this, this is what every other moment in his life is always hurtling toward, why he puts up with the loneliness and the hangovers and the self-loathing that makes him drink. Because holding a boy in his hand, watching him realize he _likes it,_ is worth every ache and pain and scar and betrayal. 

McQueen throws his head back, clenches his jaw. “Fuck,” he grinds out, eyes snapping open suddenly like he remembers he’s supposed to be watching the video. His gaze skitters back to the screen helplessly while Doc plays with his balls, rolling them gently, thumbing up the underside of his cock where a vein is pulsing. The solo video ended, and there’s a POV blow job happening now with the same girl. He stares at the screen while Doc stares at him, such determination written across his face that Doc’s forced to wonder if he’s trying to stave off orgasm, escape the reality of the scenario, or both.

There are two types of straight men who become more committed to whatever porn is playing the second Doc starts to touch them: the sort who’ll lose their erection if they think too much about whose hand is on their dick, and the sort who like it way _too much_ and are trying to prove to themselves that it’s good because somewhere, even remotely, made from pixel, there’s a woman involved. He’s not sure which type McQueen is yet, so he tests the water. “This video okay? Want me to pick another?” 

“No, don’t stop,” he rasps, gritting his teeth before he dissolves into breathless, surprised laughter. “It’s, uh...it’s been a minute. Since I actually had someone touch me. Like, toward the end of stuff, Sally and I weren’t sleeping together at all.” 

Doc doesn’t say anything, he just turns his attention to the screen, where this girl is deep-throating a cock much bigger than McQueen’s, eyes shut, lashes clotty with mascara. “Want me to suck it?” he risks, pitching forward on his aching knees so that McQueen can feel his exhalation, the heat of it, and _imagine._

McQueen doesn’t even reply, he just laughs with so much air that it turns into a wheeze, which turns into a groan. And then he reaches behind Doc’s head with a sweat-sticky hand and guides him down. 

Doc loves having straight boys drag him on their cocks, fuck his face, choke him. Punish him for wanting this thing they thought they couldn’t give him, or perhaps punishing him for making them realize that they _could_. They could give it and get off on it. He likes their rough fingers in his thinning hair, their carelessness, their brutality, their desperation, their loss of self. 

But McQueen doesn’t touch him like straight men have in the past. There’s a wavering trepidation to his touch, he guides without force, fingers tender, gentle, unsure. Once Doc gratefully swallows him down, sucking so hard and nervy that he _feels_ the spastic twitch between his lips in response, McQueen’s hand leaves his skull to slide gently down the collar of his dress shirt and then the planes of his back. The touch is so exploratory and curious that Doc’s insides are knotted up tight in his gut, his own cock hard in his slacks, which doesn’t always happen. 

“Oh, my _god,”_ McQueen keens, razing his nails up and down Doc’s spine, rucking his shirt out from where it’s tucked in. “What the _hell_ are you doing?!” he marvels, like he hasn’t ever been blown right in his entire life, like he doesn’t know what it _feels_ like to be savored, worshipped, eaten up. Doc is a good cock-sucker only because he _loves_ sucking cock, so the whole thing is self-indulgent, his greatest pleasure. He loves the taste, the feeling, the maddening rush of power that comes along with being the first man’s mouth that any of these boys have ever felt. The first, the last, the only. Something wondrous and incidental, to be locked up and stored safely, shame-black and magic all at once. He _loves this,_ so he’s the best at it. It’s what happens when you’re motivated by greed and left in a cage to starve most days. 

He pulls off, wipes his mouth, and studies McQueen’s flushed face with his tongue pushed into his cheek. “Never had your dick sucked before, kid?” he asks, dipping back down to mouth gently up the side of it, slide fingers under the heft of his balls to cup them. 

McQueen laughs again, cock bobbing temptingly only inches away from Doc’s face. Doc’s not sure if he’s ever had a boy on his couch who laughed _so much_ through a scene while still somehow managing to stay hard. It’s nervous laughter, but it’s also sheepish, sweet, shy. There’s a pervasive self-deprecation to everything McQueen does, and that surprises Doc. So rarely do straight men ever find their self-deprecation _here,_ in this moment. It’s usually after the high wears off, when they’re left with nothing but the gritty reality of spit on their spent dicks and a wadded-up hundred-dollar bill in their fist. 

“Like I said,” he says, teeth so white as he grins. “Not in awhile. And not so good. Too bad m’ not actually a gay guy, you guys are great at this.” 

“Not all of us,” Doc shrugs, pressing kisses up his length before swallowing it down again, able to fit the whole of it down his throat without gagging, without feeling short for air. McQueen whines, rucks a palm up Doc’s spine, fingers digging in. Doc’s heart leaps at the contact: it’s been so long since he was touched by another man with such _certainty,_ with such _hunger,_ however tentative.It’s a dangerous thing to get complacent in, but he’s never been particularly good at self-preservation when there’s a cock in his mouth, so he leans into the indulgence, closes his eyes, and moans around McQueen’s cock as he sucks it in desperate pulses. 

“Uh—fuck, m’close, gonna come soon,” McQueen chants, quads twitching under the hand Doc has reverently spread over it. “Do you want, uh, wanna get that on camera? Or should I do it in your mouth?” 

Doc pulls off reluctantly in a froth of saliva, drunk on the taste of him. He _should_ get his orgasm on camera, it’s the money shot after all, what his viewers are waiting to come to themselves. But at the same time, he wants to swallow this boy _down,_ wants him stinging his throat in searing swallows, wants the flavor of him to linger for hours after he leaves and never comes back. “How do you shoot off? Is it a big load?” he asks, lips ghosting over the sensitive head of McQueen’s cock in a patina of spit, voice slurred. “Think you could do both? Enough for the camera and my mouth?” 

“Um,” McQueen gasps, hand still idly rubbing back and forth over Doc’s shoulders, like he’s trying to ground himself there. “I dunno, depends. I feel, uh, feel like it’s gonna be big this time, though. Fuck, that feels so fucking good,” he curses as Doc licks at him, unable to stay away for very long. 

“Okay, I got you. Angle your hips here so you’re in the shot, and come just like that,” Doc urges, pressing his face into the ditch between his thighs, mouth open and slick against his shaft before he takes it in hand and jacks him off. “I’ll try and catch some in my mouth if there’s enough.” 

Something about _that,_ the clinical exchange, the negotiation of where his come will end up, pushes McQueen over the edge in a sudden spasm. He groans, makes a fist in Doc’s shirt, and then he’s nothing but waves of trembles, cut-off gasps. 

“That’s it, good,” Doc praises gently as his heart thunders, his stomach drops. It _is_ a big load: one ribbon shoots off and lands in the sunny, red-gold thatch of hair under McQueen’s navel. He’s still twitching, more is coming, so without thinking, Doc swallows his cock down so he can milk him, suck the come right out of him, leave him dry and scorched and forever changed, the forest after a fire has ripped through, leaving something once green blackened and smoking. 

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ ,” he grinds out, lifting his hips, fucking mindlessly into slick heat. Doc smears the come up McQueen’s chest with his free hand, keeps the other one spread wide on his thigh to hold him down, in the line of the camera since he’s in danger of bucking out of frame. The taste of him is impossibly bitter and salty on his tongue, fierce like the entire ocean, and as Doc pulls away, he’s the one gasping. 

“Damn,” he marvels, wiping his mouth on his arm, mustache wet with spit, with come. He can smell McQueen all around him, searing and ripe in every burning lungful. “You’re made for porn, kid.” 

“Thank you, I guess. Holy shit,” he mumbles, sprawled bonelessly on the couch amid furrows of midnight blue. A goddamned vision, the stuff of Doc’s loneliest dreams. McQueen’s cock is still hard and pulsing as he palms it, idly stroking it as he comes down, grip lubricated by Doc’s spit. He has the potential to _actually get hard_ again, come again, maybe. Doc can tell, he knows the way it looks. But straight boys never stay long after their orgasm, so he sits back on his heels, uses the coffee table to push himself up gingerly, knees popping again. “You think the video’s gonna be good?” McQueen asks, carding a hand through his messy blond hair. He hasn’t covered up yet, hasn’t stopped being able to look Doc in the eye. He stares up at him from the couch, eyes a rich green-blue, like sea glass half-buried in sand, skin like an entire beach glittering under the sun, shining in its sheen of sweat.

“Haven’t watched it yet,” Doc reminds him, turning away to adjust his own erection in his trousers, hands trembling. “But that was some real good shit. You’re vocal, expressive. Viewers like that. Sometimes I get guys in here, and they don’t make any noise, don’t move around. Doesn’t make for a very compelling video, but you...you’re handsome _and_ a decent actor.” 

“Wasn’t acting,” McQueen grins, shaking his head. “Damn, old man. You sucked my soul out. I guess there’s a first time for everything, huh?” he looks down at his chest, rubs a palm up over his stomach. “Can I have a tissue or something?” he asks. 

“Sure, here you go,” Doc says gently, handing him some baby wipes. “You clean yourself up, there’s a bathroom with a sink right through that door if you want. M’gonna check out the footage. Take your time.” 

And with that, Doc unhooks the camcorder from the tripod, watching out of the corner of his eye as McQueen hops up and stumbles into the bathroom, orgasm-dizzy and off-balance. Once he’s shut the door behind him, Doc unbuckles his own belt and works his hand into his pants to find heat, to find relief. 

He shuts his eyes tightly and touches himself, not needing to watch the video. The images are burned into him indelibly, the sounds of McQueen shuffling around one room away and the lingering taste on his tongue enough, enough. 

—-

Doc doesn’t always need to make himself come after it’s all over, after he’s paid up and they’ve shouldered their way out of the studio as quickly as possible, gaze fixed on the ground, hands in revulsed tremors like the last leaves clinging to late autumn’s trees. Sometimes he’s not even hard, satisfied by the act of servicing men who loathe him. Other times he’s hard, but he denies himself relief. Perhaps as a punishment for this filthy, half-cruel thing he does. Or perhaps because it allows him to cling to the semblance of power: _they_ come, these straight men writhe and gasp and come apart in ribbons, but Doc does not. He remains laced up, composed, controlled. 

He knows it’s bullshit, of course. He’s _always_ the one more wrecked, the one robbed of power. There’s no game he can play to change that. But sometimes, when he can hold out, it feels like winning a footrace. Like making fists in the fabric of his own tattered dignity and keeping it from tearing. 

—-

Doc comes into a condom, turns it inside out, ties it off, and tosses the milky white mess of it into the wastepaper basket beside his desk. His pants are up, belt buckled, and the camcorder connected to the laptop well before McQueen ever comes out of the bathroom. 

His hair is damp with water like he tried to smooth it down, cheeks flushed and dimpled from smiling. 

“I was about to knock on the door and see if you’d drowned,” Doc quips, making a show of standing up, getting his wallet out. “Or escaped through the window.” 

“No,” he shrugs. “Just dizzy. Had to recover. “ Then, after a measured pause, “How’s the video?” 

“It’s great, real quality stuff,” Doc says as clinically as he can. They don’t ask about the videos, usually, they just want their money at this point, the only thing left for them to justify what’s transpired. Doc still isn’t used to all the ways in which McQueen surprises him. “I just need you to sign this release form if you’re alright with it going on the website.” 

“Sure,” he says, taking the clipboard Doc offers him and scrawling a loose signature. Doc takes it back, narrows his eyes at the looping script. “Lightning McQueen?” 

“It’s my porn name,” he grins. “I came up with it just now. You made me come too fucking fast,” he jokes, shoving his hands in his pockets. Doc’s gaze crawls over him in wonder, the way the stone-washed denim hugs his thighs, the tear in the knee where he can see the golden hair on his legs like sunshine peeking through the slats of a window. 

“Great, I like it,” Doc mumbles, getting out a crisp hundred and three crumpled twenties. “Thanks for coming in, kid. Here you go. M’nothing if not fair.” 

McQueen counts it, brow furrowed. Then he pockets the hundred and hands back the rest, shaking his head. “I feel weird taking that much, like...I didn’t do anything. Can’t pay _me_ for a good blowjob.” 

“Kid,” Doc sighs, wondering why he’s _lingering,_ why he’s not hurrying out like the rest, like hell and all its fire is lapping at his heels. “Just take the money and get outta here.” 

“Okay! I’ll take some but not all of this, s’not fair.” 

“It is,” Doc argues, heart suddenly pounding. He feels drunk again, even though the feel of a boy under his hands is the most tremendous high, and every other sensation should pale in its wake. “You’re a gorgeous boy, and you let an old queer blow you. Just—you did me a _favor_ , you know that?” he admits then, and this is perhaps the only time that he’s _ever_ told a straight man the truth. _You have all the power. This is all I have: hundreds of videos immortalizing the fact that I_ do _get to touch beauty, sometimes, even as the world rots and burns around me and my body gets older and older._

McQueen beams. “Even though m’not hung?” 

“Yeah,” Doc says. “Even so. Take the money before I think too much about it.” 

He folds it up and slides it into his pocket. “Thank you.” 

Doc sees him out the door, and McQueen lets him touch his _elbow,_ steer him right out into the eerie orange glow of the streetlights, making the starless ink of the sky a diluted, muddy blue. His hair glints under the shine, though, like mika glinting from a lake bed.. And in this moment, Doc doesn’t want to let him go. He wants to say, _wait, stay, let me have you again, let me show you how fucking good it can be, here in the gutter, lit up in red lights._

“Here’s my card,” he says instead, holding it out arm’s distance between his index and middle finger, offered from miles away while he stands braced in the doorway of his garage. “In case you lost the one I gave you at the bar.” 

McQueen tucks it in alongside the cash and smiles. “I can hit you up again if I need quick cash?” he asks. 

“Yep,” Doc promises, turning away, grip tightening on the brass knob. “You know where to find me.” 

_In the gutter, lit up in red lights._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more of this!!! rimming alert <3

Doc wakes up aching and hungover, convinced that Lightning McQueen was a fantasy-born fever dream. But then he checks his laptop, and the footage is there, every second of it as burning hot and remarkable as he remembers. Those shy smiles, the broken-open moans, everything bright and gold like an egg fried sunny-side up. McQueen’s _hands_ all over his back, touching him, careful and thoughtless at the same impossible time. Doc brings himself off to the video twice over the course of the day before editing and uploading it to his site. 

TWINK-SIZE COCK ON A VOCAL STR8 BLOND BEAUTY is what he settles on for a title, even though it doesn’t cover the multitude of things that make this scene special. Doc wants to keep some of it for himself, though, so he cuts bits of dialogue, of laughter. It’s still a great video, and he shakes his head as it goes live, knowing he’s not the _only_ one who’s gonna fall in love with this boy. He’ll be popular. His subscribers will ask for him back. 

Sure enough, the first comment is _love this boy, could wake up to him every morning._ Second is _that blond!!! would kill to see more of him._

Doc’s legs are weak from coming, and he doesn’t want to have to keep getting up to refill a glass, so to save himself the trip, he grabs the whiskey bottle and brings it straight to the couch, the same couch he held McQueen down on as he came hard and fast and perfect down his throat last night. The whiskey burns the memory of swallowing as he types out _sorry, boys. You know what they say: Lightning never strikes the same place twice._

He’s had a few repeat offenders, but none like McQueen. They’re rarely so _cute,_ so authentically eager. The type who come back are broke or in trouble or looking for drug money, driven to return with their tail between their legs because they need the cash and don’t have a quicker way to come by it. Or else they’re gay and only just realized it, which means the videos won’t have that special filth that Doc likes for his site. The wavering reluctance, the shock, the capsize. It’s a gay4pay site, his subscribers don’t want to watch men who know what they want. The fantasy is in the _not_ wanting it but hungering for it in some base infernal way all the same. 

Golden boys like McQueen have folks falling at their feet, they don’t _need_ to sulk back to a garage studio in the Valley for a few hundred bucks. He’s not gay, and he’s not desperate; he won’t be back. Doc thinks he was lucky to have him once. 

But two weeks later, he gets a text from an unknown number. _Twinksized cock here!_ it says, and he stares, dry-mouthed from where he’s still lying in bed, even though it’s well after 1 pm. He’s been on a bit of bender for a few days, not for any other real reason save for the fact that Los Angeles lights itself on fire at the end of every summer, and he’s tired of the orange, cloying smell of smoke outside. So he had a drink, and then he didn’t stop. It might _also_ have something to do with the two subpar videos he’s shot since McQueen. An eighteen-year-old, shifty-eyed boy who let him touch for a minute or so before he had a crisis and kicked him off, and a forty-something-year-old minimart employee who took forever to come but _wouldn’t_ let Doc even watch, so he was stuck waiting for a good hour listening to Riley Reid moan on repeat. They would be weak footage any time but following McQueen? They’re downright terrible. Doc scraps them and LA burns and he finishes off bottle after bottle, knowing full well that he’ll only come out when the last is empty. 

But then this fucking text. He sits up fast, kicking off his sheets as his cell vibrates again, head pounding. _It’s “Lightning” McQueen dunno if u remember me but i did a video 4 u wondering if you’re interested in doing another,_ the second text says. 

Doc rubs his temples fiercely, stumbling into the kitchen. He needs to eat something before he deals with this, so he throws open the fridge. There’s nothing in there but ketchup and a six pack of Corona, so he takes a bottle, using the edge of his linoleum counter to open it. It takes a few tries, and he’s shaken it up so much that yellow foam spills over his hand, but even after he’s guzzled half, those texts stay on his phone. He hasn’t dreamed them, he hasn’t hallucinated them. 

_think i remember,_ Doc texts back, watching each letter appear one after the other, ants on parade. He’s not sure if he’s still drunk or just terrifically hungover, but every second his eyes stay on the screen, it hurts. _when are you free to shoot?_

_Whenever!_ McQueen texts back, so fast, so eager. Doc imagines his smile and nearly retches into his sink. _2nite if you’re around._

_i’m around. how bout 8?_ Doc feels like shit, his house _looks_ like shit, he needs to clean up and restock his fridge and shower and become a presentable human again, instead of just some sad, old, porn-dealing drunk. Lightning doesn’t strike the same spot twice, so he’s got to board this train if it’s coming back round. 

_sounds good, see u then,_ McQueen shoots back. 

And like that, Doc has a date of sorts. 

He needs to sober up, he needs to have something more than booze in his body, he needs to not be a mess when Lightning McQueen shows up, so he makes himself take a cold shower and walk to the minimart for a frozen pizza and some coffee. He brews a pot and fires up the oven while he cleans the kitchen, washing dishes and wiping the build up of grease and old coffee grounds from the counter. He’s not convinced that Lightning’s going to follow through on his word, and even if he does, it’s not like he’ll go inside the house, but regardless, Doc is grateful for a reason to take care of himself, his space. Even if he _doesn’t_ show up, at least the threat of his presence forces Doc to clean, to eat, to shower. To look at the near future with more than exhausted indifference. 

Shockingly, Lightning _does_ keep his word. Ten minutes to eight, there’s a knock on the studio door, and Doc looks up from his laptop, heart in his throat. “Come in,” he calls, and it comes out in a defensive growl. 

Lightning shoulders his way in, smelling like Old Spice, his hair a little overgrown since the last time Doc saw him. It’s pulling length, makes him even prettier, somehow, and Doc thought the shine might have worn off in the last few weeks, in the thick smokey air outside. Boys sometimes lose their magic, but not Lightning McQueen. He grins, and Doc’s chest aches, just like it did the first time. “Hey,” he says, hooking his thumbs into his pockets, shuffling in, looking at his beat-up low-top sneakers instead of Doc, instead of the women on the walls. “Sorry m’early.” 

“S’fine,” Doc says. _Couldn’t stay away, could you?_ he thinks, followed by _so eager to get your dick sucked again, aren’t you?_ These are things he _would say,_ if he felt like he could, if he wasn’t limited to slurred, choked-out single syllables. He’s hot all over so suddenly, like Lightning brought the fires with him. “You look good,” he manages, which is neither of the things he meant to say. 

Lightning’s smile widens, he lifts his gaze before dropping it fast again, cheeks pink. “Really?” 

“Yeah. Real good. Your video’s doing great on the site, too...glad you’re back,” Doc mumbles, standing up from the couch, gesturing toward it. “You can sit down.” 

“So can you,” Lightning quips, collapsing onto the couch, the plastic squeaking under his weight. “We’re not gonna start this second, right?” 

“No, guess not,” Doc sighs, gingerly sitting down again beside Lightning, careful that their knees don’t brush, angling himself away from the inviting splay of those legs. 

“So I found your site, watched your videos,” he announces, tugging at the loose strings at the tear in the knee of his jeans. “ _STR8suck.com_ ," he adds, saying it aloud carefully, slowly, like he’s testing how the words feel in his mouth. 

Doc coughs. “Well, damn, okay, so you know all my secrets now,” he tries to joke, wishing he had a beer, _something_ to wet his mouth, to curl his fingers around. “Would love to hear what a straight guy actually thinks about it objectively.” 

Lightning shrugs. “It was weird, I guess. But interesting. Fun titles…love all the puns. _ADICKTED TO STR8 CUM. POUNDED BY STR8 PLUMBER TO PUSSY PORN._ You use a lot of alliteration. It was…I dunno, I expected it to be different than the shit I’ve watched, but it’s all the same, sort of.” 

Doc nods, spreading a sweaty palm over his thigh nervously. He feels exposed, flayed open to bleed to death here on his plastic-coated couch. “It’s an industry thing. I wish I could be more creative, trust me.” 

“Nah, I liked it. It was funny,” Lightning says. “You have a sense of humor about all this. It’s refreshing.” 

Doc doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he just studies him, the way he squirms under his gaze if it lingers too long. “Did you just watch your video?” he asks. “Or any others? For research.” 

“I watched a bunch, actually. Most of the guys…they’re pretty hung. You talked a lot about liking huge cocks in other videos. Made me wonder if you were lying to me, for the camera or something. Which would be _fine,_ I know this is, like, your job,” Lightning says, shaking his head, laughing. “I sound ridiculous.” 

“I think your cock is perfect,” Doc assures him, only half-believing this conversation is really happening. “Plus, it’s good to have some variety on the site. Don’t want all the guys looking the same. _I_ appreciate diversity.” 

“Hmm,” Lightning says, hooking his fingers into the tear on his knee, worrying it further. Doc stares and wonders, wonders. “I also...I noticed that a lot of dudes talk shit in the comments about how they wish _you_ weren’t in every video, which I thought was sort of stupid. Maybe my opinion doesn’t count, I’m not a gay dude watching gay porn, but the way I see it? It’s your site, that’s your whole gimmick, isn’t it? That you’re like some thirsty, old, gay dude, seducing all these idiots and getting to suck them.”

A sudden, barking laugh comes out as Doc’s mouth opens, his heart thundering. He stands up because he can’t sit here next to Lightning McQueen while he analyzes his brand, can’t let himself be seen by one of his boys. Especially not _this_ one, the one who’s gotten the most deeply and concretely under his skin. He walks to the studio fridge and pours them both some whiskey. “I gotta tell you,” he says, handing Lightning his. “This is the first time one of the guys I shot with came back and wanted to _talk_ about it.” 

“Really? I bet you more than just have gone and watched, though. They’ve _got_ to be curious, I was fucking curious. I wanted to know if I looked good, you know, wanted to know if guys liked it. Even though m’not gay, I still like the idea of guys thinking m’hot, I dunno, maybe that means I’m insecure.”

“All straight men are,” Doc observes, throwing back a measured sip of whiskey. “It’s part of why I like them.” 

He expects Lightning to resist that, to press on it, but instead his eyes light up. “See, that’s the thing! That’s why it makes sense that you’re in all your own videos. Like, I guess your gay-guy viewers want to see two straight guys together? But to me, that seems like it would be sort of a disaster. You know what you’re doing, that’s the point. Damn, if I had just been standing there with another guy like me, I would have never fucking got into it. I probably would have freaked out.” 

Doc finishes off his whiskey, and pours himself another, desperately needing to steady his hands. “You have a lot of opinions about gay porn for a straight guy,” he finally offers. 

“Hey!” Lightning snaps defensively, kicking his dirty Converse up onto the coffee table, thighs splayed loosely. Doc wants to skip all this scrutiny in favor of just getting _between_ them, splitting this boy apart, instead of allowing himself to be split. “They’re professional opinions,” he adds, frowning. 

“Ah, yes,” Doc says, raising his eyebrows. “Good. Been wanting the professional opinion of a straight mechanic on my videos.” 

“No! I mean…well,” he stutters, staring at the ground. “I can’t remember if I told you this at the bar, but I wanted to be a director. That’s why I moved here to California, to make movies.” 

Doc rubs at the edge of his glass, heart clenching up with something that he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. Tenderness without hunger, perhaps. A brand of want untethered to flesh. “Yeah?” he says gently, moved that Lightning McQueen would tell him this, that a boy in his position would offer something as vulnerable as a dream to a dreamless man. Doc could laugh, but Lightning told him anyway, and that feels like a remarkable sort of thing. 

“Yeah. I wanted to do, like, underdog sports movies, you know, boxing, car racing. Make the _Rocky_ of my generation, I guess, so I came to LA. Everyone tells you that if you wanna make movies, you gotta come to LA. But, _man_ , the industry is a bitch if you don’t have connections or money or experience. The vision isn’t enough, so every time I interviewed for anything, they just told me I should act instead,” he finishes, shrugging. 

“That’s because you’re pretty,” Doc tells him, meaning so much more. _You’re compelling, you’re sweet, you have the sort of face anyone could look at and want more of, the sort of blue eyes people write about drowning in._

_“_ Wanna know something funny?” Lightning says to that, looking up and taking his first real drink from the glass Doc gave him. 

“Shoot.” 

“Every time I actually _did_ follow up on acting auditions, when people offered me work and said they had a role for me? Every _goddamned_ time, it ended up being some fucking soft-core porn thing,” he admits, snickering, shaking his head. “Every time. Always turned it down because of, like, the stigma, but also because of my dick. Thought it would rule me out.” 

“And here you are,” Doc says, chewing his lip. “And here I was, thinking I was your first.” 

“Oh, you were,” Lightning says, eyes bright as he rolls them, looks at the ceiling briefly before holding up his glass. “Guess it was my destiny to have people jack off to me.” 

“Cheers,” Doc says, clinking their glasses together. “To your calling.” 

“Yeah, so,” Lightning says after he finishes off the drink, throat rippling, lips shining, eyes so suddenly all pupil. “Are we gonna make another video or what?” 

—-

Doc writes a manifesto on his site about straight men. About the delight of them, the way their fear tastes, the way they think, how they hide, how they come, how they feel in the palm of his hand. How to hunt them, and in his experience, how the prey behaves. 

There’s too much to ever put into words, though. It’s not just the high stakes or the fleeting, delicate balance of convincing them they aren’t changed by coming in another man’s mouth. Doc doesn’t just love them as a byproduct of loathing them, of pitying them. He loves them authentically: the power, the ease, the simplicity. That while some of them question their identity after shooting a video, most of them _don’t._ They scurry back to their lives and their wives, they shrug Doc off as an experiment, as money, disposable and forgettable. They are so _convinced_ of themselves, that it shatters nothing to let a man touch them, once. 

—-

Lightning gets so hard, so fast. Doc has him show off for the camera a little to change up the video format, and, _fuck,_ he’s such a showoff, it feels like a heartattack to watch. He gets on his knees facing the back of the couch, looks over his shoulder at the camera, palms over his ass cheeks, parts them, arches his back, _all_ because Doc tells him to. “Your ass is fucking perfect,” he tells him, squeezing it, leaving streaks of lube shining over the taut, rippling muscle of his cheek, and the mere _suggestion_ makes Lightning tremble. “So perfect. Gonna get a close-up.” 

“Is it weird?” Lightning asks, swaying, eyes hazy. “Is it weird that I totally get off on the idea of gay guys wanting to fuck it? Like, I don’t _want_ them to fuck it, not really, but showing it off…it’s so hot,” he mumbles. His words slur, and Doc feels like he’s gonna fucking die, like no one should be so _honest._ Lightning’s voice burns like fire on his skin. 

“Not weird, plenty of straight guys feel the same way. You’re fucking teases, all of you,” Doc mutters, thumbing tentatively into the crack. “What will you let me do?” he asks then, swaying closer, cock twitching in his pants at the memory of Lightning confessing that he’d _watched_ the videos. He knows some boys might agree to fuck him on camera, some will let him lick their ass, suck their balls. Every straight boy has a different, stupid, arbitrary limit. It’s his job to seek it out, to get away with everything else he can get away with in the process. 

“Um,” Lightning mumbles, jacking himself off, spine dipping into the loveliest shape. “I’ve never had my ass eaten before.” 

“You wanna see what it feels like?” Doc asks as his mouth floods, his weight pitching forward reflexively. Too good to be true, Lightning McQueen is the stuff of dreams. His gaze fixes on the golden hair dusting his thighs, the only sounds coming from the orgy video that neither of them is watching on Doc’s laptop. 

“Sure,” he pants, hand moving faster on his cock. “You’ll stop if I don’t like it?” 

“Of course,” Doc promises, kneading his cheeks with both hands, loving the way the muscles jump and gather under the squeeze of his palms. “You call the shots here, kid.” 

“Okay, go for it,” Lightning rasps, arching his back deeper, reaching back and pulling himself apart tentatively. “Before I think about it too much.” 

Doc doesn’t waste time. The only thing he likes more than sucking straight boys’ cocks is eating them out, thumbing them apart like the halves of a peach, and drowning in their secrets, in their filth. It always seems like a fluke when they grant him this, a tear in the sky where stars can fall though in broad daylight. Doc doesn’t make a habit of questioning it, though. There’s nothing better than that bitterness on his tongue. 

Lightning’s breath snags, catching in his throat at the first swipe of Doc’s tongue, wide and wet and hungry over his hole. He initially tightens, flinches away, but Doc knows how to ride that out, how to persevere. He just has to hold him apart, lap right into him, kiss that twitching ring of muscle until it slackens up. 

“Oh, my god,” Lightning moans, rubbing his face into the back of the couch, parting his knees wider. Doc can feel him in tremor, his legs vibrating with strain. 

“Good?” Doc asks, rubbing his stubbled chin over the slick pink of him, making it burn. “You like that?” 

“Fuck, yeah, it feels so fucking good, what the _fuck_ ,” he grinds out. Doc holds him open for the camera so that it can capture the way he’s winking, the subtle gape of his hole as he flexes open. So fucking perfect, so hungry. He _knows_ Lightning would take cock so well, that he’d _beg_ for it, that he’s _made_ for it. His hole is soft and sweet and hungry, so _easy_ for Doc to fuck his tongue up inside rhythmically. Lightning rocks against the pressure, moans hard and loud at each thrust. 

Doc pulls away to suck in a messy, wet breath. “Turn around, lemme see that cock. Lemme see how hard it is.” 

“Jesus,” Lightning chokes out, making a fist in the blue blanket to steady himself, his other hand tightening on his cock as it leaks all over his fist. He shifts accordingly, showing his cock to the camera, and, _god,_ Doc can’t stand it another second. 

“Want me to suck it?” he asks as he’s clambering into position, the ache in his knees faraway. 

Lightning nods, tears clumping the gold of his lashes, his moan so loud as Doc swallows him down that he can hear it over the pounding of blood in his ears. 

There’s salt and heat and steel and softness, Lightning’s _hands,_ again, all over Doc’s back, nails digging in through a layer of cotton as he comes hot and sudden. The taste is something Doc’s been trying to remember for two weeks, and he’s so fucking grateful for the surge of it over his tongue, sharp and hot against the back of his throat. 

He pulls off and spits the load back over Lightning’s cock so that he can show the camera, rub it into his pubic hair, coat his perfect little shaft in pearly white. “Look at all that,” he marvels. “Could knock a girl up with that, so much.” 

Lightning wheezes with laughter, collapsing back down onto the couch. “Let’s hope not.” 

Doc can’t stop touching him, has no intention of stopping. He’s still hard, and he’s not gonna let that go to waste. “Bet I could make you come again,” he murmurs, looking up at him, knowing that his haze is hungry, that it probably burns. “You wanna try?” 

“God...sure,” Lightning sighs, shrugging. “M’not gonna stop you, old man.” 

Doc grins, settles into the tide of his luck, and fits his mouth back over him. 

—-

Doc navigates the world as if it’s a convenience store, every man a potential for purchase. It’s so much _easier_ than doing what most gay men do: looking for someone, _anyone_ else like them. That needle in the haystack, the diamond in the rough. A dangerous fucking game, dropping pins and testing waters and knowing full well that if there’s an incorrect assumption, a misstep, you could end up dragged behind a truck for it, beaten in an alleyway. Doc has never known how to find other men like him. 

He knows how to find straight men, though. They’re everywhere, they crawl the streets like insects over a rotting carcass, taking up space, posturing, yelling, blustering, swallowing tears. It’s impossible to escape them, so Doc learns to change what he wants, for his demand to meet the supply. He shops, he buys, and they’re cheap and don’t last, but there are always more. 

—-

Lightning McQueen is lying on the couch in a mess of midnight blue, sweat on his skin, sweat darkening his hair into a mess across his brow. Doc can’t stop staring, but Lightning doesn’t seem to notice or mind, so he doesn’t feel the need to stop. The air smells like sex, and the porn has been muted, nothing but labored breath filling the studio. 

“Drink some water,” Doc tells him eventually, grabbing a bottle from the fridge and offering it to him. “Looks like I sucked you dry.” 

He laughs. “You did. Except m’also, like…soaking wet. Do you have a shower I could use?” His hand drifts down to his _finally_ soft cock, sweet and pink against his stomach. Doc licks his lips. He’d do it again if Lightning would let him, if he hadn’t finally dissolved into breathless, desperate laughter after the third orgasm and shoved him off. “I don’t want to put my clothes back on all sweat-drenched like this.” 

“In my house,” Doc mumbles, touching his mouth, which is swollen. “There’s a shower.” 

“Isn’t your house attached to the studio? Or are us lowly ‘str8’ boys not allowed in there?” Lightning asks, craning his neck up off the couch to peer at Doc with his eyes glittering and blue, warm like a summer day. 

Doc’s heart races, part of him _knows_ he shouldn’t let Lightning McQueen worm his way into any more places. He’s already staked so much claim, and _yet._ Doc wants him there, wants to think of him naked in his shower, soaping up his narrow chest, the ladder of muted muscle on his stomach flickering beneath foamy rivulets. “Fine,” he groans, rubbing his mustache, loving that he can still smell Lightning in the bristly silver hair, under his nails, everywhere. “Knock yourself out, I’ll show you inside. Cover yourself up first, though, will you? We’re not filming anymore.” 

Lightning hefts himself up, wraps himself in the blue blanket, and follows Doc through the door that connects the garage to the laundry room. 

“This is actually pretty nice,” he says as he walks through the newly clean kitchen, down the hallway, to the master bathroom. “I was expecting a bachelor pad, but you’re clean.” 

Doc scoffs, remembering how it looked only a few hours again. “It isn’t always. Curse of living alone, you let things go.” 

“I don’t live alone, and my house is always a fucking wreck. I love my roommate, he’s, like, my best friend, but he’s also a redneck and a fucking hoarder. I’ll come home sometimes, and there will be a hubcap in the sink. You can hardly walk through our garage, its filled with so much shit,” he continues, hopping along. “Oh, sick, you have a tub? I wish we had one of those. One that isn’t _full of car parts.”_

Doc actually laughs in spite of himself. “Sounds like a character.” 

“Oh, he is. Sounds like Larry the Cable Guy when he talks, but he’s actually shockingly liberal and not a bad person and…yeah, I owe him one or two or ten, so I just, like. Put up with the weird living situation. But this...this is nice. Nice to actually breathe. Move around without worrying about knocking some pilfered road sign off the wall.” 

“Well, enjoy yourself, then. You can use this when you’re done,” Doc says, pulling a ratty, stained, but thankfully laundered towel from the cupboard under the sink. 

He sits in his living room on the beat-to-shit ‘70s sofa while Lightning showers, eyes locked on the TV even though he’s not actually _watching_ anything. He’s not sure what’s happening, how he let himself get talked into allowing Lightning inside his _house._ It breaks so many rules, will _inevitably_ end in too many crossed wires and knotted heartstrings and broken bones. But, still, he lets it happen. Because he _wants_ to get hurt, maybe. Because he’s never gotten good at saying _no_ before, because the sorts of boys he hunts down for sport don’t usually ask for anything save for their cash and the fastest way back out into the street. 

Lightning’s different, and Doc isn’t sure how. 

He forces himself not to flinch when the water shuts off a few minutes later, and Lightning emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam before collapsing down next to him on the couch. “Thanks,” he says, smelling like Doc’s two-in-one bodywash, spicy and clean and entirely too familiar. “You’re a lifesaver. Anything good on? You watch football? I don’t, but my roommate does. He cares about _all_ the sports. Only thing he’s gotten me hooked on is Formula 1,” he says, sitting back, shaking his damp hair out like a dog. 

Doc should ask him to leave. Kick him out, slide a wadded handful of cash into that deceitfully big, capable-looking hand (or maybe the pocket of his Levis, close to his scrubbed-clean skin), but instead he asks, “Want a beer? Bet I could find some F1 to watch,” because he _wants_ to get hurt, maybe. Because he’s never gotten good at saying _no_ before. 

“Sick, yeah, I’d love that! If you don’t mind,” he adds, grin so wide and easy, like something made from sugar melting into a cast-iron pan. 

“I don’t mind,” Doc shrugs, and he’s not even sure if he’s lying. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all have to thank Liv/Scottspack for this, she's the reason it finally got written!!! Good news is that I feel galvanized to write more, and eventually finish this story. I love these characters soooo much. Enjoy!!!

CHAPTER 3 

After that second time, Lightning McQueen becomes a habit. 

He comes by once a week at _least_ , and he always lingers, sticks around for an hour or or two or three after he finishes on camera and cleans up. Doc doesn't know what to _make_ of it, really. This has never happened to him before, where a boy kept up their arrangement so regularly without confessing to a gay crisis and seeking advice. And the few times _that_ has happened, they never tried to make _friends_ after the fact. He was just a stepping stone in their narrative. A dirty, fingerprinted mirror to assist in self-discovery. Not a friend, not a lover. They never texted again once he served his purpose in their life, once they disappeared to blaze their own trail. They just left. They _always_ left. They didn’t drink his beer, or lounge around in stained boxers on his couch, or order takeout from their favorite Chinese dive on the corner and share it with Doc. 

But then there’s Lightning McQueen. 

He’s either profoundly lonely, profoundly dumb, or profoundly _nice_. Or maybe just so secure in his sexuality that he doesn’t think seeking out sex with a man once a week makes him gay. It’s also possible that he’s _so_ lacking in self-awareness that he genuinely doesn’t _see_ this as sex, no matter how many times it happens, how many times he empties himself into the heat of Doc’s mouth, how many times he pulls his cheeks apart to show his spit-wet hole to the camera, cock hard and needy against his stomach. If he _is_ gay, he doesn’t know it yet. And Doc’s benefiting too much from his current state of ignorance to want to say anything that will push him into elucidation, so he _doesn’t._ He just lets him take up space in his studio, in his _home_ , and stays silent about all the things it might mean. 

Doc hates to admit it, but having Lightning McQueen in his pocket has made his sorry life a whole lot better. For one, he's not drinking as much. He’s always been the sort of alcoholic who told himself he could stop if he had a reason to stop, which never actually _mattered,_ since he _didn’t_ have a reason. But now he does. He’s got to have his house and studio clean for recurring company, he needs to spend hours editing the new jackpot of fantastic footage he’s filmed, he’s got to be _coherent_ enough to enjoy Lightning to the fullest. He doesn’t want to half-remember the taste of him when he watches the video the next morning, he doesn’t want to lose a single second of what it feels like to have that hot little cock down his throat, spasming in his fist. He wants to be presentenough that he can _study_ this boy, learn all his tics and tells, memorize what he likes best, how he comes fastest, what kept him on the edge long enough that he came so good he couldn't even get it up again (this has only happened once, but still, Doc wants to _know_ ).For the first time in a long time, Doc has something to _savor,_ and he’s not gonna dull the experience with booze if he can help it. So he drinks _after_ shooting a scene. Splits a six pack with Lightning or makes them both whiskey gingers with Canada Dry because he learns it's Lightning’s favorite soda. 

For two, his site is _booming_ like it hasn’t in years,Lightning has brought a _ton_ of new traffic and subscriptions for premium content. Everyone loves him, loves how _eager_ he is, how vocal, how much he comes, how many times. Usually smaller to average dicked guys generate fewer hits, but it doesn’t seem to matter with Lightning because there’s really just something _magical_ about him, hidden in the shine of that sweet, sheepish smile. One user commented _that kid is the perfect combination of shy and cocky and i just can’t get enough,_ and Doc, for once, agrees.

Luckily, it seems like Lightning can’t, either. He starts to show up more and more, sometimes several times a week, sometimes _back to back_ on the weekends when he works fewer hours at the shop. Sometimes he won’t even give Doc more heads up than the five-minute drive between their houses, he’ll just text _on my way!_ and show up there on the doorstep in his engine-grease-stained Levis, so Doc has gotten better about stocking up on frozen pizzas, just in case. 

It’s terrifying, and it’s delightful, and Doc’s terrified to be delighted. He’s not sure what will come out of this, when his novelty will wear off, when Lightning will get a new girl or have some revelation that sends him elsewhere. He's not sure about anything, really, but he’s almost _happy_ for the first time in forever. So he decides to relent, to ride this wave as long as it lasts.

He chooses to drown in the way that Lightning McQueen tastes, the way that his warm, callous-rough fingers scrub gently along the back of his neck when he blows him, the way that he gets on his stomach and cracks himself apart like a ripe peach and whimpers and begs into the couch, fogging up the plastic when the blanket falls aside in their fury. Doc will take what he gets until the ocean dries up and leaves nothing but a patina of salt.

—-

Doc’s never been in love. He’s not even sure his heart knows how to do it. Every time he’s cruised for gay men, followed them into smoke-choked clubs or dark basements or onto fire escapes with the city glittering beneath them and sunk to his knees to suck, he ran before he could feel anything, wiping his hand on the back of his mouth with his mind a cloud of panic, thinking, _I’ve gone too far. I've done too much_. Every time he’s fucked a hole loose from poppers, or allowed himself to be held after coming and told he was beautiful, or cradled a man’s face between his palms and kissed and kissed until his lips were swollen and raw from the scrape of stubble, it felt like a threat, somehow, in its rawness. In its honesty. It felt like standing on the edge of a cliff and testing gravity. 

He’s so much more _scared_ of intimacy than he is of the game he’s made from finding and seducing straight men. And sure, straight men can, and do, hurt him. They can throw punches and pull guns and spew slurs and reel away from him like they've come to their senses and remembered that his blood might be dirty. But men like Lightning? They can crack his chest, reach between splintered bone, and find his heart. They can hold him close, fall asleep beside him, wake up next to him. They can stay, and also, they can leave. 

—-

The next time Lightning comes over, he brings a vintage gaming console and hooks it up to the TV. Normally, Doc would think this was stupid, resent being forced to let someone fiddle with the complicated network of cords plugged into his ancient surge protector behind the entertainment center. However, he’s realizing that he’ll let Lighting do just about anything, especially if he’s excited, if his eyes light up like they do when the battered screen glows with the Nintendo logo as he cheers in triumph. “Fuck, yeah,” he says, settling back against the couch, shoulder bumping against Doc’s knee. “It’s working.” 

“Why couldn’t you do this at your house?” Doc asks again, because he doesn't actually remember. He can hardly keep Lightning’s outlandish, meandering stories about his roommate straight on a good day, but he's also _high_ right now, still floating after getting to lick Lightning out so long that his camcorder died before they finished the scene, so he’s happy to just sit there and watch this boy tinker with the controller on the floor, the corner of his mouth extra pink because he chews it when he tries to focus. 

“Because Mater and I don’t have a TV. He has a little one he plugs in at the shop that’s _super_ old, it’s got rabbit ears and everything. But he traded the second-hand flatscreen we had at the apartment for some, like….vintage bumper? Thing? He insists it’s worth a lot, but he never sells his shit,” Lightning explains, dragging himself up off the carpet to collapse next to Doc on the couch, leg all over his lap because Lightning doesn’t care _at all_ about whether or not he’s in someone’s space. And maybe it shouldn’t be weird because Doc _did_ just have his face in Lightning’s ass only an hour or so ago, but in his line of work, that makes it even _weirder._

Straight guys, or even guys who _think_ they’re straight but are teetering on the edge of a gay crisis, don’t casually, nonchalantly touch other men. Doc pulls away from it most of the time, makes space, sets boundaries. But then there are nights like this, when he’s loose-limbed and can still smell Lightning on his mustache, when they’re just hanging around each other so amicably that he _forgets._ How he met Lightning, what they’re supposed to be to each other. “I know I make Mater sound crazy most of the time, but I promise he’s actually great. You’ll love him when you meet him.” 

And shit like _that_ throws Doc, too, because it sounds like _Lightning_ also forgets what they’re supposed to be to each other. He scoffs, shaking his head, marveling at the idea that this kid somehow thinks the old man who shoots gay4pay porn with him is ever gonna meet his mechanic _roommate._ It’s absurd. It’s endearing, and it makes his mind wander foolishly to versions of an impossible future where Lightning _stays._ Festers into his skin like a barbed foxtail seed, brings about a spreading infection. 

Lightning makes Doc play a few rounds of some absurd fighting game they’re both terrible at, so to make it tolerable, they drink too much, polish off a bottle of bourbon even though they’ve run out of mixers. Doc’s dizzy and laughing too much, too freely, and Lightning’s elbow keeps digging into his side to distract him, to throw his game, and it’s too damn _easy,_ really. To settle into all the ways this feels so goddamned good. 

Eventually, one of their controllers stops working, and Doc’s eyes are stinging too much to continue anyway, so he shuts off the TV and sits there next to Lightning in his suddenly dark living room, an empty bottle between them, heart in his throat. In this moment, it feels like anything could happen, and the notion hits him in the teeth like a punch, steels him, freezes his blood. 

If he were a braver man, he’d reach for Lightning’s leg in the shadow. He’d do it carefully, questioningly, to test how he’d react. But Doc is not a brave man. He’s a dirty, self-loathing man who needs a camera to witness the sins he commits in order to swallow them, so instead of touching Lightning in the dark, he hauls himself up and stumbles over to the light switch to flick it on.

The room spins. Lightning is sprawled out haphazardly, arms spread along the back of the couch as he blinks in the sudden spill of yellow-orange light from the single bulb. “Time to sober up, kid,” Doc tells him, grabbing a water bottle from the fridge and tossing it his way. “You can’t drive home like that.” 

“Can I just crash here?” Lightning asks as he stretches, arms reaching up over his head so that his stained red shirt rides up. He’s got such a gorgeous stomach, padded and soft over a layer of muscle, everything dusted in gold-brown hair. Doc’s rubbed his palm over it, thumbed Lightning’s load up to his navel, his chest, so many clinging beads of white glistening like snow. He’s never kissed him there, though, and it’s something that haunts him at night. Imagining him scouring his lips raw on the hair there, the salt of his skin under it like a secret. “Promise I’ll be gone in the morning, I’ve got an early shift.” 

Doc sighs, stands there braced against the counter for a few seconds contemplating if that’s a line he can let Lightning McQueen cross. It feels impossible to come up with a good reason why he _shouldn’t_ stay, though—it’s not like they're sharing a bed. It’s not like he can kick him out this drunk in good conscience. It’s not like he actually _wants_ him gone. “Fine,” he huffs eventually, shaking his head as he drops heavily back down on the couch, mindful to make sure that there’s no place they’re unnecessarily touching. It’s surprisingly difficult; he’s not sure _why_ a kid as short and narrow as Lightning manages to take up so much space, but here he is, all over Doc’s furniture, his house, his heart like a wine stain. “I’ve got some spare sheets, maybe a pillow. No toothbrush, though, you’re outta luck on that front.”

Lightning moves his hand through the air messily. “I’ll use my finger. You don’t have company much, do you?” he adds, grinning. His smile is a dazzling, stomach-turning thing, and Doc will sometimes rewind video footage just to watch it flash across his face like a thunderstorm. 

“To the studio, sure, but not to the house. Haven’t had someone _spend the night in—_ fuck, maybe ever,” Doc mumbles, speaking too freely for how late it is, for how much he’s had to drink. He tries to keep himself from broadcasting his loneliness; no one wants to see how ugly it is, especially not young kids like Lightning McQueen, guys who are just sorting themselves out, getting their shit together. Lightning’s like a monarch butterfly straight out of its chrysalis, wings crushed and drying in the sun. He’ll fly, soon. He doesn’t want to be dirtied by Doc’s past. 

He’s all ears, though, eyes hazy and half-lidded as he turns to Doc, stares at him so long that the blue of his eyes starts to _hurt,_ solidifying into a reflective surface like glass. He squirms, and Lightning frowns. “Okay, tell me to shut up if this is, like, too personal. But do you not have a boyfriend because you’re only attracted to straight guys?” he asks, one brow arching up curiously. 

Doc isn't expecting it, so he barks out a laugh that turns into a shocked, sputtering cough. It _is_ too personal, but Lightning’s gotten to him, says everything so molasses-sweet that it’s impossible to not want to give him an answer. Doc wants him _so badly,_ in every way, that he can’t even remember how to self-preserve. “No...no, I don’t have a boyfriend because no one wants to date an alcoholic old queer who makes porn for a living.” 

“Oh,” Lightning says, eyes widening like he never considered that possibility. “The straight guy thing has nothing to do with it?” 

“Well,” Doc mumbles, shrugging. Of course it has to do with things, it has to do with _everything_. It’s a self-protective mechanism at its core, he _knows_ that. It’s so much safer to fuck guys who can’t love him back, even if he were to make the mistake of loving them in the first place. His gaze skids over the line of Lightning’s jaw where he’s stubble-rough, always smiling. He wonders if he’ll even remember this conversation in the morning, or if he can get away with half-truths, bits of raw flesh revealed through paper-cut skin. “I’m not _only_ attracted to straight guys. That’s just—it’s a fantasy. A fetish, you know? I get off on it, but it’s also my job. When it comes down to it—,” his voice aborts, his heart stops. He should quit now, back up, and save himself from confessing things to Lightning McQueen, but it’s hard when he makes the whole world feel like honey. Doc’s not used to honey. It makes him stuck and sugar-rushed and stupid. “I guess I want the same thing everyone else does. To fall in love, find something real,” he admits, shrugging again. It stings coming out of his throat, acrid like bile, and as soon as it happens, he realizes he can’t fucking look at Lightning. His cheeks burn as he tears his gaze away. “Damn, I shouldn’t be talking about this. M’too drunk,” he grumbles. 

“Huh,” Lightning says, fiddling with the drawstring of his sweats. “So if—if you _were_ gonna fall in love, what would you want? What sorta guy?” 

Doc grits his teeth, stomach rolling at how invasive it feels to be asked this shit period but _especially_ to be asked by Lightning. _You,_ he thinks incredulously, throat tight. _I’d fall in love with a boy just like you, a beautiful mess of a thing who won’t leave me alone. A boy who’s not afraid of the dirtiest things I want. A boy who smiles all the time. Who pets my back while I suck him. Who changes me. “_ I don’t know,” he lies, making a face. “It’s not gonna happen, so I try not to think about it.” But he _is_ thinking about it now, sitting there staring at his age-withered hand clutched tightly around an empty whiskey glass, wondering what he’d _actually_ want if he wasn’t so hell-bent on falling in love with impossible spun-gold kids half his age. “You know…probably the best thing for me would be some regular old guy. Stable job, good money, knows who he is, what he likes. Lonely enough to not mind what I do for money because he appreciates a good blow job enough for it to not matter,” he settles on. It’s odd, to realize these sorts of men _exist,_ maybe. But that he’ll never find them because he doesn’t let himself get close enough to try. He's playing schoolboy instead, chasing impossible things, sunshine instead of firelight. 

Lightning laughs, throwing his head back, throat bobbing and glorious. Doc would kiss him there if he were allowed to, he’d suck a mark right where his pulse speeds and press his fingers into it day after day until it faded. “They _are_ really good blowjobs,” Lightning says then. “Any guy would be lucky to have you as a boyfriend, I think.” 

Doc snorts and stands up, not able to exist there beside the warmth of his body anymore, allowing himself to get softened by his words. “You’re delusional, kid,” he says “M’going to bed.”

When Doc stumbles back out to give Lightning blankets, he’s already passed out, face pressed to the couch cushion, mouth open and snoring. Doc braces himself against the wall and watches for far too long. 

—-

Every once in a while, straight boys turn out to be not actually straight. There was one a few years ago, a lanky doe-eyed thing who broke down mid-scene his second time back in the studio, threw Doc from his lap, and scrambled away, gasping. Whenever something like this happened, Doc’s first move was always to defend his face. His hand rose into position, operating on some long-since-buried memory of schoolyard boxing, fists drawn, prepared. But the boy didn’t take a swing. He hung his head and struggled to breathe, and after a few tense, slack-jawed moments of wavering, Doc recognized it as a panic attack. 

So he brought him some water. He rested his hand on his back. He gave him a blanket to cover up with. Told him it was okay that he liked it, it was okay that this was the way he found out. 

And eventually, the boy scraped himself up off the floor and shook hands with him, like this was a transaction or some strange induction into a secret society. Now you’re a freemason, now you’re a spy. Now you love men, and you will be forever lonely and broken and mired in the shadows, chasing lights down endless tunnels. You are banished to back alleys, to rest stops, to leather clubs, to the gutter. You’ll never be the same. 

Doc didn’t wonder about him much after he left, but a few months later, he got a text: _just wanted to thank you for the kick in the pants. i have a boyfriend now. I'm out to my sister, she took it well. appreciate the reality check u gave me, not sure i’d be here without it._

Doc read it a few times over, stomach twisting up into confused knots, and never replied. He just returned to the back alley, the gutter, the rest stop, the leather club, the gutter. He kept stumbling down that endless tunnel, hands outstretched towards the light. 

—-

They don’t even bother with the porn on the laptop anymore. 

It stays open and muted on the table, playing a random video chosen from pornhub's most popular menu while Lightning unbuttons his jeans, rolls them down his thighs. Doc _knows_ that Lightning isn’t getting off on whatever he’s watching. He’s getting off on _him._ His practiced mouth, his adoring hands. Lightning McQueen comes hard, and over and over again, to an old man sucking him off like he needs it, and Doc wants _so badly_ to know what that fucking _means._

Lightning still touches him the whole time he does it. That wasn’t a fluke fashioned in the chaos of inexperience, it’s just something he _does._ Pets Doc’s thinning hair, the loose skin at the back of his neck, his dress-shirts where they stretch tight across his shoulders. He’s only rough if Doc asks him to be, which he sometimes gets away with: pulling back so just the glistening tip of his cock rests on his lower lip, catching crystal blue eyes with his own, murmuring, “Fuck my mouth.” 

It takes him a few tries to understand and accept how much Doc can take, how deep he can swallow him. But once he figures it out, he gets swept away in it, eyes wide and fascinated, stomach a taut, flickering plane as he lays a palm on the back of Doc’s head and shoves him all the way down, over and over again. 

The sustained contact is usually what Doc thinks about, what he _envisions_ , when he makes himself come in the bathroom after it’s all over. The way the porn plays silent in the background, willfully forgotten while Lightning _stares,_ mouth open and red and parted with awe at the fact that Doc hardly gags, even with his dick shoved all the way down his throat. It finished Doc off, knowing that Lightning’s hard over the way _he_ loves sucking dick. Loves sucking _his_ dick. 

And that’s a strange sort of intimacy, Doc realizes: not just making a boy come, but _making him come._ He’s so used to men doing everything in their power to forget it’s _his_ wet mouth they’re fucking, _his_ ancient hands making their balls shiny and drip with lube. To be acknowledged—to be _wanted,_ even. He tries not to let that get to his head, tries not to get ahead of himself in hoping that Lightning McQueen will come around. After all, it doesn’t make this any more casual. It doesn’t make it _mean_ anything. It just makes Doc crazy, is all. 

Crazy and crazier, so crazy that he’s fucking _ruined._ He stops watching other videos. Stops making other videos. He stops seeing every liquor store and sports bar as a prowling ground, stops searching for other men to lure back into his web _all together._ His life used to consist of covering endless hunting grounds, seeing potential in every dark corner, but Lightning flooded him with sunlight, _blinded him,_ and now he can’t see anymore. He could probably get off to another boy if he _tried,_ but what is most troublesome about Doc’s condition is that he doesn’t even _want_ to. He doesn’t want to witness skin that’s not Lightning’s (with the sheen of sweat, the scattering of freckles, everything soft and flawed like homemade bread), he doesn't want to suck a cock that doesn’t fit perfectly in his mouth (no stretch unless he wants to swallow the whole goddamned thing, unless he wants to suffocate). He’s lost in him and him alone, forever remembering the slant of his smile, the weight of his hand on his own back, the timber of his voice wavering the closer and closer he totters to the edge of collapse. 

And what’s _worse_ is that when Doc’s alone, he’s not _only_ imagining Lighting in the studio, on the plastic couch, naked and panting and flushed red all the way down his freckled chest. He’s imagining him in stonewashed jeans and a stained white tank top in his living room. On his porch shivering in an oversized vintage NASCAR windbreaker. Sitting on the floor with the Nintendo in his lap, angles of his face lit up in the blue light of his TV. Doc is imagining the way he looks when they’re spending time together _without_ the pretense of sex, just Lightning as Lightning is: a dumb young kid, goofy and earnest and somehow ignorant to all the ways in which he’s special.

Sometimes Doc even imagines Lightning in places he’ll never be.What he might look in his _bed,_ tangled in his sheets, what he might look like with his slick fingers curled around the neck of a Corona in the shower while Doc watches him drink under the spray because Doc hasn’t been able to shake the image from his head ever since Lightning told him his favorite time for a beer was when he washed his hair in the morning before work. Doc sees Lightning in every corner of his home, he inserts him into every lonely day and lonelier night. Lightning has become every wish that Doc accidentally makes when he’s drowsy and drunk and half-awake in bed, letting his restless heart long for a body beside him, heat pressed up against the outer edge of his arm. It’s been decades since he imagined holding a boy just so he could fall asleep. And he doesn’t think it’s _ever_ been a particular boy, a real flesh-and-blood human instead of a faceless ghost to fill the void. 

Doc has no prebuilt defenses because he never thought this could happen to him. He guarded his skin, and nothing was supposed to pierce it, no one was supposed to get under it. No one _had,_ for years and years. 

But here Lightning McQueen is. Drinking beers in Doc’s shower, behind the black curtain of sleep. Haunting every room of his house. Threading fingers into his hair, forcing him down and down, until he chokes. Holding on and refusing to let go. 

—-


End file.
